What Fits in a Backpack for Two Years

What Fits in a Backpack for Two Years

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“But the question at the centre of it, which is how to carry your life in a bag for an extended period, remains genuinely practical.”

The backpack as a symbol of a certain kind of travel has a specific history. It begins on the overland routes of the 1960s and early 1970s, when young Westerners started moving through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and India in numbers large enough to constitute a recognisable phenomenon, carrying their belongings in military-surplus rucksacks and sleeping in the cheapest rooms available in cities that had not yet developed an infrastructure specifically for hosting them. The route became known as the Hippie Trail, which is a name that flattens a complicated thing into a cultural shorthand, but it produced something real: a model of travel that was about duration and immersion rather than destination and itinerary, about the journey itself as the point rather than the specific places you could say you had been. The backpack was the emblem of this approach, the signal that you intended to stay longer and spend less than the people with matching luggage.

Tony and Maureen Wheeler published the first Lonely Planet guidebook in 1973, produced on a kitchen table in Melbourne after they had driven overland from London to Australia. It was called Across Asia on the Cheap, which is a title that has the virtue of clarity, and it described routes, accommodation and transport options that were already being used by the people moving through the region but had never been gathered in a single practical document. The guidebook created an infrastructure of information around a form of travel that already existed, and the infrastructure in turn enabled the form of travel to grow. By 2011, backpacker culture has its own economy, its own architecture of hostels and guesthouses and tour operators, its own media and its own somewhat contested relationship with the authenticity it imagines itself to be pursuing. But the question at the centre of it, which is how to carry your life in a bag for an extended period, remains genuinely practical.

I have been reading about this for weeks, which means I have encountered a very wide range of contradictory opinions. The minimalist school holds that a carry-on-sized bag, thirty-five litres or less, containing five or six items of quick-dry clothing and a small selection of technology, is both sufficient and morally superior. The pragmatist school holds that sixty to seventy litres gives you the flexibility to adapt to different climates and situations without permanently hunting down the nearest launderette. The romantic school holds that you should pack nothing you are not prepared to abandon and buy everything else when you need it, which is excellent advice for places where what you need is readily available and problematic advice everywhere else.

1973,

Tony and Maureen Wheeler published the first Lonely Planet guidebook in 1973, produced on a kitchen table in Melbourne after they had driven overland from London to Australia.

What Fits in a Backpack for Two Years

I have settled on a sixty-five litre Osprey with a detachable day pack, packed to just under fourteen kilograms. This is my working theory, with the understanding that the theory will be revised in practice.

Clothing occupies less space than expected once you accept that you will do laundry regularly and do not need seven days of everything. Three lightweight t-shirts. Two pairs of quick-dry trousers, one of which converts to shorts. A fleece. A rain jacket that compresses small. Enough underwear and socks for a week. One pair of walking trainers and one pair of sandals. A set of thermal base layers for Nepal, which is at altitude and cold in ways that tropical-climate packing lists do not account for. One item of clothing that functions as smart enough for the occasions that require it, because refusing to acknowledge that such occasions exist is not the same as them not existing.

Electronics: an iPad rather than a laptop, which is the compromise between useful and portable. A camera. A phone. Cables, adaptors, a universal power converter that cost twelve pounds and will, I am certain, be the most-used item in the bag. A headtorch, which every practical guide agrees is essential and which I initially dismissed as the kind of thing serious outdoor people bring before accepting that I will need it.

A hundred dollars in small bills, maintained as a float and replaced when used, saves significant inconvenience
in the specific situation of arriving somewhere without local currency and needing to pay for something.

Medical: rehydration sachets, a broad-spectrum antibiotic, antihistamine, antiseptic, blister plasters, a thermometer, and a supply of prescription medication in sufficient quantity to avoid the specific anxiety of running out of something necessary in a country where the same formulation may not be available. This is the category where skimping is false economy. A week in a Vietnamese hospital costs more in every sense than the weight of a decent medical kit.

Documents and money: a slim passport wallet worn under clothing, containing the passport, emergency cash in US dollars, a backup debit card and copies of the key documents. The US dollar functions as a reserve currency across most of Southeast Asia and much of South America, accepted in places that have no reason to accept the pound. A hundred dollars in small bills, maintained as a float and replaced when used, saves significant inconvenience in the specific situation of arriving somewhere without local currency and needing to pay for something.

What I have left out: a towel, a travel pillow, an alarm clock, a guidebook in print. The hostel provides the towel, the rolled fleece provides the pillow, the phone provides the alarm, and the guidebook is on the iPad in digital form, which is lighter and searchable and does not fall apart in humidity. A padlock, which I realise I have forgotten, will need to be purchased before the first hostel.

Cables, adaptors, a universal power converter that cost twelve pounds and will, I am certain, be the most-used item in the bag.

What Fits in a Backpack for Two Years

The US dollar functions as a reserve currency across most of Southeast Asia and much of South America, accepted in places that have no reason to accept the pound.

The bag weighs fourteen kilograms. It contains everything I own for the next two years. The question of whether this is enough will be answered progressively, country by country, as the things I don’t need reveal themselves and the things I have forgotten become apparent. This is how most practical problems resolve themselves: not in advance, but by going.

Dave

Dave

A British ginger seeing the world one questionable decision at a time. Based wherever the wifi works.

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